Fallout 3

Fallout 3


War. War Never Changes.

It must suck to be GTAIV right now. Last November, there was an absolute glut of great, great AAA titles, and Rockstar wanted nothing to do with fighting BioShock, Mass Effect and their friends. So they brought out their next-gen urban crime sandboxer in May of this year, and when I played it, I immediately crowned it Game of the Year. Nothing could touch it in production values or overall unifying aesthetic. Then the "Summer of Arcade" took the pressure off full disc releases, and it looked like, with Dead Space being great but not perfect and a few other titles faltered, GTAIV looked sure to sweep the year-end accolades.

Oops.

Fallout 3 is not the best game this year. It is the best game made so far. In games. Period, full stop. Bethesda so completely nailed the setting, and their attention to detail spilled over into every thing about the game being fantastic. In the ten years since Fallout 2's release, there's been endless fanboy gnashing of teeth, and while this won't satisfy them (nothing would have, let's be honest), this game delivers at the end on all the promise it offered at the start. Ostensibly, the game follows the progress of one of Vault-Tec's underground Vault Dwellers as he or she makes their escape into the blasted wastelands of a post-apocalyptic future/past Washington DC and affects the world around them on the search for his/her father, who ran away too.

Graphically, there isn't a lot to dislike. It has a draw distance that is essentially unparalleled, thousands of intriticately detailed character models, weapons, landscapes and enemies. More importantly, Bethesda totally nailed the design ethic of a future world where the rock-n-roll revolution never happened, and idyllic 1950's culture endured into a world of fusion cars, talking robots and of course, nuclear holocaust.

The sound runs the gamut, from traditional (but well-choreographed) 'fight music' as enemies approach, to a smattering of classic big band tunes on the various rogue radio stations still broadcasting to the wastes. No expense was spared on voice talent, either, as Malcolm McDowell lends his vocals to the voice of President Eden, and Liam Neeson takes on the role of your father. And of course, Ron Perlman reprises his role as narrator. Weapons and explosions are suitably booming, and the laser weaponry is pew-pew-y enough to harken 1950's space invader paranoia without parodying it.

The controls are daunting at first, but once the realization sets in that the game is essentially an RPG with turn-based combat, it becomes a lot more fun. All projectile weapons are terrifically inaccurate when fired from the hip, but once you enter VATS (a timestop action point based combat system) the enjoyment floods back into the game. The minigames really nail the feel of the actions they mimic; the hacking game in particular is rewarding, as you guess and filter clues to find the correct word out of a list, using a process of elimination, while the lockpicking minigame has real tactile response and overall pressure factored in to it.

Fallout 3 really shines not in the main story (which almost seems intentionally stunted and cropped to get the player to really explore) but in the almost endless variety of sidequests, and the absolutely jaw-dropping amount of things there are to do. There are simply too many things to do in this game, and you cannot possibly do them all. After having sunk over 70 hours (that's not a typo; there's a reason there's a week's gap in posts) into this game in the last month and still playing every day, I haven't explored even half of the game's world. The best parts of the game aren't even in the side quests, they are - like Heaven itself - in the details.

In one corner of the map, you will find a series of giant satellite dishes. Climbing up to the top of them reveals a pile of potato chips and several empty liquor bottles, lying on the top of the dish. And at first you are baffled, but it makes perfect sense. As the world is totally going to hell around you, it'd be pretty sweet to watch the nuclear sunrise from the highest point you can get to; just hanging out on top of a satellite dish and watching the stars as the world decays. There's really nothing I can say about the game that tops that, once you realize that that sort of attention to detail and logical concluding pervades every single step of the game, and you appreciate how much work went into making it, you have no choice but to laud it for basically the crowning achievement in building, populating, and convincingly destroying an entire world.

Graphics: Absurdly good. Highly-detailed walls, ground and a twinkling night sky, unique setpieces everywhere and the longest draw-distance I've ever seen. 5.
Sound: Great voice-acting, especially from the 3 "real stars" brought in, though some characters obviously have the same actor, but the effects and music (both licensed and original) are stellar. 5.
Controls: Not an issue. The only complaint is the inability to jump while on an incline, but that's an engine issue that can be avoided by not trying to glitch to inaccessible areas. With the choice to play any or all of the game in a 1st-, over-the-shoulder- or 3rd-person view, you shouldn't have any complaints. 5.
Tilt: Completely off the charts. Captures the dark human, fatalism and grittyness of Fallout without devolving into parody or taking itself too seriously. Secrets and easter eggs are everywhere. 5.
Overall (not an Average): Tendrils' Top Picks